Cambridge, MA – Many things account for Haiti’s modern troubles. A good perspective on them comes from going back in time to 1715 or so — and grappling with a far-flung narrative involving the French monarchy, a financial speculator named John Law, and a stock-market crash called the “Mississippi Bubble.” To condense: After the death of Louis XIV in 1715, France was mired in debt following decades of war. The country briefly turned over its economic policy to Law, a ...

People recovering from heart failure should consider improving the regularity of their sleep, a study led by Oregon Health & Science University suggests. The research team found that even moderately irregular sleep doubles the risk of having another clinical event within six months, according to a study published today in the journal JACC Advances. A clinical event could be another visit to the emergency room, hospitalization or even death. “Going to bed and waking up at consistent times is important for overall health,” said lead author Brooke Shafer, Ph.D., ...

HOUSTON – (Aug. 21, 2025) – Wrinkles can be an asset — especially for next-generation electronics. Rice University scientists have discovered that tiny creases in two-dimensional materials can control electrons’ spin with record precision, opening the path to ultracompact, energy-efficient electronic devices. If most devices today use the charge of electrons flowing through silicon to process and encode information, future computing may instead harness spin — a quantum property of electrons that takes on either an “up” or “down” value. Computing with spin could overcome the limitations of current silicon-based technology, reducing ...

The brain controls the release of glucose in a wide range of stressful circumstances, including fasting and low blood sugar levels. However, less attention has been paid to its role in day-to-day situations. In a study published in Molecular Metabolism, University of Michigan researchers have shown that a specific population of neurons in the hypothalamus help the brain maintain blood glucose levels under routine circumstances. Over the past five decades, researchers have shown that dysfunction of the nervous system can lead to fluctuations in blood glucose levels, especially ...

TAMPA, Fla. (Aug. 21, 2025) — A new international study led by researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center, the Karolinska Institutet and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has uncovered a surprising mechanism of resistance to immunotherapy: cancer’s ability to injure nearby nerves. The study, published in Nature, shows that when cancer cells infiltrate and damage tumor-associated nerves, it triggers an inflammatory response that ultimately weakens the effectiveness of anti-PD-1 immunotherapy. This widely used treatment works by unleashing the body’s immune system to attack ...

New experiments by Christian Wood and colleagues suggest that the marmoset brain area 46 (A46) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is key to a functional network that regulates positive and negative emotion-related processes. The findings relate directly to motivation and responsiveness to threat, which play important roles in depression and anxiety. The study also sheds some light on how non-invasive treatments such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and the drug ketamine may work within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to reduce depression and anxiety. Wood et al. show that inactivation of A46 blunts reward-seeking behavior (a hallmark of depression) ...

A collaborative team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Ajou University in South Korea has revealed that the unique fan-like propellers of Rhagovelia water striders —which allow them to glide across fast-moving streams—open and close passively, like a paintbrush, ten times faster than the blink of an eye. Inspired by this biological innovation, the team developed a revolutionary insect-scale robot that incorporates engineered self-morphing fans that mimic ...

In the past decade there has been significant interest in studying the expression of our genetic code down to the level of single cells, to identify the functions and activities of any cell through the course of health or disease. The identity of a cell, and the way that identity can go awry, is critical to its role in many of the biggest health challenges we face, including cancer, neurodegeneration, or genetic and developmental disorders. Zooming in on single cells allows us to tell the difference between variants which would otherwise be lost in the average of a region. This is essential for finding new medical solutions to diseases. Most single cell ...

Thousands of years ago, ancient humans undertook a treacherous journey, crossing hundreds of miles of ice over the Bering Strait to the unknown world of the Americas. Now, a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder suggests that these nomads carried something surprising with them—a chunk of DNA inherited from a now-extinct species of hominin, which may have helped humans adapt to the challenges of their new home. The researchers will publish their results Aug. 21 in the journal Science. “In terms of evolution, this is an incredible ...

Irvine, Calif. — Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have spotted a contradiction in worldwide wildfire trends: Despite a 26 percent decline in total burned area from 2002 to 2021, the number of people exposed to wildfires has surged by nearly 40 percent. The study, published today in Science, revealed another statistic that may come as a surprise to people who rely primarily on Western news sources: While high-profile wildfire disasters in the United States, Canada and Australia often dominate headlines, the researchers found that 85 percent of all human exposures to wildfires during that period occurred in ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study provides fresh evidence that ancient interbreeding with archaic human species may have provided modern humans with genetic variation that helped them adapt to new environments as they dispersed across the globe. The study, published in Science, focused on a gene known as MUC19, which is involved in the production of proteins that form saliva and mucosal barriers in the respiratory and digestive tracts. The researchers show that a variant of that gene derived from Denisovans, an enigmatic species of archaic humans, is present in modern Latin ...

New research, published today in the journal Science, shows how lysosomes — organelles that act like cells’ waste disposal system — respond to stress by becoming abnormally bloated, a process called lysosomal vacuolation that is associated with numerous diseases.   Essential for cellular health, well-functioning lysosomes are also linked with healthy aging, so better understanding of the steps involved in vacuolation could eventually inform new therapies to treat diseases or promote healthy aging, according to senior author Jay Xiaojun Tan, Ph.D., assistant ...

A new Stanford study challenges the decades-old view that the rise of land plants half a billion years ago dramatically changed the shapes of rivers.  Rivers generally come in two styles: braided, where multiple channels flow around sandy bars, and meandering, where a single channel cuts S-curves across a landscape. Geologists have long thought that before vegetation, rivers predominantly ran in braided patterns, only forming meandering shapes after plant life took root and stabilized riverbanks.  The new study, which will be published online by the journal Science on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, suggests the theory that braided rivers ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When a disease-causing virus or other organism is transmitted from one species to another, most of the time the infection sputters and dies out. On rare occasions, the infection can perpetuate transmission in the new host species and cause a pandemic. For example, scientists are keeping a close eye on H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza, which causes bird flu and has been found in cows and humans. But is there a way to anticipate when infections will die out on their own and when they will persist? New research, led by scientists at Penn State and the University of Minnesota Duluth, identified certain characteristics that could help predict whether ...

Polaritons are formed by the strong coupling of light and matter. When they mix together, all the matter is excited simultaneously – referred to as delocalization. This delocalization has the unique ability to relay energy between matter that is otherwise not possible. Disordered energy is ubiquitous in nature and the universe. Disordered energy is less organized and less available to do work, such as with heat dissipation. Even in plants, disorder can ruin effective energy transfer. In the context of polaritons,  as disorder increases, it can negatively affect light-matter ...

CONTACT:        San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance  Public Relations  619-685-3291  publicrelations@sdzwa.org  sdzwa.org  PHOTOS AND VIDEO: https://sandiegozoo.box.com/s/mu2h8bea811yx58oq11fs4q8l3binow8 SAN DIEGO (Aug. 21, 2025) – Endangered Pacific pocket mice, native to Southern California, were once thought to be extinct until a tiny remnant population was rediscovered in the mid-1990s. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance established a conservation breeding and reintroduction program to save the species from extinction. Though there has been significant success with breeding and reintroduction, the species is ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A fast radio burst is an immense flash of radio emission that lasts for just a few milliseconds, during which it can momentarily outshine every other radio source in its galaxy. These flares can be so bright that their light can be seen from halfway across the universe, several billion light years away.  The sources of these brief and dazzling signals are unknown. But scientists now have a chance to study a fast radio burst (FRB) in unprecedented detail. An international team of scientists including physicists at MIT have detected a near and ultrabright fast ...

Professor L. Jay Guo’s group from the University of Michigan published a comprehensive review titled “30 years of nanoimprint: development, momentum and prospects” in the inaugural issue of Opto-Electronic Technology, systematically summarizing key developments and future trends in NIL, with a special focus on industry advancements in nano-Si device manufacturing and nanophotonics. The review elaborates extensively on two main NIL methods: thermal NIL (T-NIL) and UV NIL (UV-NIL), examining ...

The research group of Prof. Din Ping Tsai from City University of Hong Kong was invited to publish a review article titled “Progress in Metalenses: From Single to Array” in the first issue of Opto-Electronic Technology in 2025. The article provides a structured overview of recent developments in metalenses, with a focus on the gradual transition from single-device optimization to system-level integration based on increasing structural complexity. The article first reviews the long-standing challenges in metalens research, such as broadening the achromatic bandwidth and increasing the aperture size, and highlights representative studies and key breakthroughs in these areas. In ...

A new dataset, the Extensible Building Damage (EBD) dataset, offers significant improvements in disaster response mapping by combining satellite imagery and deep learning techniques. This dataset, covering 12 natural disasters, uses semi-supervised fine-tuning (SS-FT) to reduce the time and effort traditionally required for manual damage labeling, speeding up disaster recovery efforts globally. Building damage assessments (BDA) are crucial for post-disaster recovery, as they help in identifying areas most in need of urgent assistance. However, current BDA methods suffer from slow dataset development, largely ...

Space-based solar panels could enable solar power to be harvested continuously instead of only when sunlight reaches Earth, reducing Europe’s need for Earth-based wind and solar by 80%, finds a study publishing August 21 in the Cell Press journal Joule. Using energy models, researchers estimate that in 2050, space-based solar power could cut the total costs of Europe’s total grid system by 7%–15%. However, these numbers hinge upon the rapid development of two NASA-designed technologies in order to meet Europe’s goal to achieve net-zero by 2050.   “In space, you potentially have the ability to position solar panels to always face ...

A new study led by Mass General Brigham researchers reveals that ambient documentation technologies – generative artificial intelligence scribes that record patient visits and draft clinical notes for physician review before incorporating into electronic health records – led to significant reductions in physician burnout. The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, draw on surveys of more than 1,400 physicians and advanced practice providers at both Mass General Brigham based and Atlanta’s ...

Space-based solar power has the potential to reduce Europe’s need for land-based renewable energy by up to 80% - a potential game-changer for reaching net-zero by 2050. For the first time, researchers from King’s College London have assessed the possible impact that generating solar energy in space could have for Europe. They found it could cut energy battery storage needs by more than two-thirds. The study, published in Joule, analysed the potential of a design by NASA for solar generation, ...

For much of the 20th century it was thought that the adult brain was incapable of regeneration. This view has since shifted dramatically and neurogenesis – the birth of new neurons – is now a widely accepted phenomenon in the adult brain, offering promising avenues for treating many neurological conditions. One of the main challenges in the field has been identifying neural stem and progenitor cells (NPCs) responsible for generating these new neurons. NPCs are rare, diverse and difficult to isolate from other brain cells due to overlapping molecular signatures. As a result, understanding their biology – and particularly their role in human brain disorders – ...

About The Study: This retrospective cohort study found that taking glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) was associated with a reduced overall risk of cancer, including lower risks of endometrial, ovarian, and meningioma cancers, among patients with obesity or overweight. However, taking GLP-1RAs may be associated with an increased risk of kidney cancer, highlighting the need for longer-term follow-up to clarify the underlying mechanisms and clinical implications of these findings. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, ...